I love when I read a book and find that it is nothing that I expected it to be. If you are expecting “On Writing” by Stephen King to be a manual or some kind of Holy Grail filled with writing secrets from the master himself, you are in for a surprise. This book is more a memoir of King’s life with some nuggets of writing tips thrown in, but nowhere does King lay out the sure-fire prescription to writing a best seller. Instead, King brings the reader on a journey of his life as a writer with stories of how writing has influenced and enhanced his personal journey. I believe the memoir is meant to be inspirational and show one writer’s journey, but is certainly not meant to represent the journeys of all writers. If there was one way to write that works for all authors, that would result in a sadly uniform library of novels.

What I like about this book is that King is real. This is the true life of Stephen King, something that feels private as if the reader is getting a sneak peek inside the trailer of an actor their idolize. King tells personal stories and lets his sarcastic humor shine as well. In a few places throughout the book, King writes directly to the reader – in describing telepathy, for example, or in his statement that writing non-fiction was hard for him. It made me feel connected to King in a way that reading his fiction does not. This book shows that superb writers are only human, just like you and me. They get writer’s block, they cannot explain where the ideas for their stories come from, and they are quirky and obsessive about their ideal writing space. I also truly enjoyed King’s retelling of his brush with death. In hindsight, knowing the struggle it was for him to write this book makes it even more inspirational to read.

One thing I really took to heart while reading “On Writing” was King’s thorough understanding of word choice. The simple, precise word is usually always better than anything the thesaurus will spit out. Books with simple language are not worse than books with colorful language. In fact, peppering a novel with unique words may actually result in confusion and obscure the story. If the story is good, the words used to tell it don’t have to be fancy to prove yourself a competent writer.

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Created Jul 25, 2019 at 10:46am • Submit your own review...